All preclinical trials should be registered in advance in an online registry

The Food and Drug Administration Act of 2007 established requirements for the preregistration of clinical trials and also set penalties for non-compliance. These measures are meant to decrease publication bias which is, however, also a major issue in preclinical studies. The idea to expand this concept also for preclinical studies was indeed published in 2014 by scientists from the University Medical Center Utrecht: In this article, Jansen of Lorkeers and colleagues not only argue for the pre-registration of preclinical experiments but also put a website for registration in place. After registration by the researcher and logging into the system, the preregistration of studies is possible by providing information to 32 questions in a pleasantly designed form.
Preregistration of preclinical studies seems like a logical step, especially since other quality control measures from clinical studies found their ways into preclinical research as well, e.g. randomization and blinding. Further activities could also include multi-center experiments and a systematic approach to reproduce cutting edge research.